2Physics Quote:
"Many of the molecules found by ROSINA DFMS in the coma of comet 67P are compatible with the idea that comets delivered key molecules for prebiotic chemistry throughout the solar system and in particular to the early Earth increasing drastically the concentration of life-related chemicals by impact on a closed water body. The fact that glycine was most probably formed on dust grains in the presolar stage also makes these molecules somehow universal, which means that what happened in the solar system could probably happen elsewhere in the Universe."
-- Kathrin Altwegg and the ROSINA Team
(Read Full Article:
"Glycine, an Amino Acid and Other Prebiotic Molecules in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko" )

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Four Realms of Physics

Let us start with our everyday life. Things are going very slowhere. ...Yes. Even on freeways in and around Boston or LosAngeles! Those crazy drivers who are having the fun of their twistedmind by cruising at 90 miles per hour are really too slow to catch upwith the speed of light which is about 186,282 miles per second orabout 3 hundred thousand Kilometer per second.

Things that happen in this world - the interaction of forces andbodies - can be fully described by Newton's three laws which areintroduced in high school Physics courses. Using these equations,we know, for example, how exactly a projectile traverses its pathin the air, how to determine the slope of a bending freeway so thatat least reasonable drivers do not topple their cars while negotiatingthe curve at normal speed, etc and etc ....

In the 16th Century Newton introduced these concepts andequations and some great Mathematical tools like Calculus to solveand understand many such problems and mysteries of life.In general, that is the realm of Classical Mechanics. These equationswere tested and successfully used so many times in so many casesand situations that at the end of the nineteenth century, somePhysicists came to believe that Physics was coming to an end... Nothing more to know or understand about Physical laws.

Twentieth century changed all that when scientists tried to lookat microscopic objects and their motion and in 1905 a clerk ofa patent office at Bern, named Albert Einstein, explained whathappens when something approaches the speed of light ...

...And we got into new arenas of Physics - Relativity and QuantumMechanics .. and then Quantum Field Theory....

1 Comments:

Gosh, all these Physics concepts sound empowering for human being to understand the world around ourselves. Yet, I must admit I did not fully understand their significance when I was taking my secondary school education.

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